You Me At Six are a band who need no introduction. What you need to know is they are back and their new album drops in October.
Ten years on from their debut, You Me At Six have risen from a starting from nothing UK rock band to become a music powerhouse, hitting the UK charts with top ten albums, massive festival sets and sold out dates across the world.
We’ve listened to YMAS for the past ten years. From the release of ‘Take Off Your Colours’, through the silence that followed the monumental touring of ‘Sinners Never Sleep’, the return with ’Night People’, we’ve been there.
Essentially we’ve grown up with the YMAS boys.
We’ve stayed up until midnight on album release night. We’ve spent our 16th birthdays at YMAS gigs and spent too much of our time repeatedly watching the bands 2012 Reading and Leeds set. We have the multivariant designs of ‘Night People’, the Final Night Of Sin (at Wembley Arena) in our playlists, old band posters still hanging around our mirrors and a collection of gig tickets framed on our walls. It’s not obsessive. It’s being in love with a band and connecting with people whose music you like. It’s the music we grew and continue to grow up with.
When ‘Cavalier Youth’ was released there was the sense of ‘this is the bands new sound’. More anthemic and less heavy than the previous album (Sinners Never Sleep), the album seemed to take the band in a slightly new direction. The band sounded happier than before and more comfortable in what they had released. Three years on from Sinners, Cavalier Youth was the most memorable album release. For no reason other than You Me At Six we’re back with new music and we liked it - even if it wasn’t the same as before.
We were 10 when the band's debut album came out. Turning 16 after the release of Cavalier Youth, YMAS were a band we had grown to further love and were able to relate to in some way.
Three years later, the boys were back with a brand new album. Called ‘Night People’, it showcased the bands newer sound. More pop-py than we were used to, we accepted it into the family of YMAS albums we had lined up on our shelves. For a long time, we were unsure of what to think of it. We liked it but it wasn’t close to taking the title of our favourite YMAS album. It sounded great live when we caught the band on tour, but for us, the tracks aren’t up there with the likes of ‘Underdog’, ‘Liquid Confidence’, ‘Stay With Me’, ‘Little Death’, ‘The Consequence’ (we could go on forever) - the heavier era of YMAS.
Part of us knew this was always coming, the band heading in a new direction but it felt slightly off. Whether it was us having to adjust or the band better finding themselves in the changed genre, something just wasn’t quite right.
If there's any band who can properly pull off anything, it’s YMAS and so we hoped the band could make this all work. The reception was mixed and for the first time, we felt our opinion was divided. Part of us craving the old sound we loved but at the same time we knew the band couldn’t stay angry and angsty forever. Never fully decided on how we feel about Night People, we got very excited when Josh Franceschi tweeted “We’ve finished our new album #VI”.
Afterwards, the band started tweeting ‘it’s time for change’. ‘Change' could only be one thing. New YMAS. We waited. Teased with the promise of a new album at some point and nothing else, a date was released and the countdown began.
6/6/18.
Soon after, the band's website became a huge countdown timer. Something big was on its way.
What we were given was something we didn’t expect. A first for the band. Two brand new tracks released on the same night plus the release date and title of the band's upcoming album.
3 AM. Fast Forward. VI.
3 AM, the first track off the band’s new album called ‘VI’, debuted as Annie Mac’s Hottest Record In The World. A few hours later, Fast Forward was released. The reaction was positive moments after the tracks first play. Not only were people loving the songs, everyone just seemed to be happy to have You Me At Six back.
It was then Josh’s tweet made sense. #VI. It was a hint all along. We already knew the album title. (If only we had known.)
Due to be released on October 5th, VI will be the band's sixth studio album, and so the title is pretty fitting (other than being called ‘How to gatecrash your debut albums 10th birthday’).
(The release date is one day shy of ‘Take Off Your Colours’, the bands debut albums, 10th birthday. Originally released on October 6th, 2008.)
Of course, we are very excited. You Me At Six are back. The new music sounds huge and the band seem to have bridged the gap between their heavier past and pop-pier current sound.
We’ve grown up. The band have grown up and this is exactly how YMAS should be sounding.